`Khodorkovsky sent from Moscow to prison camp`

Moscow: Jailed tycoon Mikhail
Khodorkovsky was sent from Moscow to a prison camp today, a
security source said, as his lawyers accused the authorities
of stonewalling his request for parole.

"Khodorkovsky was sent to a prison camp," a security
source told the ITAR-TASS news agency without elaborating on
the exact location of the camp.

Both Khodorkovsky`s wife and his lawyers were earlier
denied a meeting with the jailed former Yukos chief on the
grounds that that he was being prepared for departure.

Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev
have been in prison since 2003 and were in December convicted
of a second set of fraud charges.

Platon Lebedev`s lawyers also said that they could not
meet with their client today morning and were told by prison
authorities after waiting for two hours that he has been sent
to prison to an undisclosed location.

"It was some kind of a special operation carried out
in order not to let lawyers meet with their clients,"
Lebedev`s lawyer Konstantin Rivkin said.

Ahead of the second trial, Khodorkovsky was
transported in February 2009 from the Siberian prison camp
outside Chita where he was serving his first sentence to a
Moscow detention facility where he has been ever since.

It is not clear if he is returning to Chita or another
facility.

Both Khodorkovsky and Lebedev requested parole last
week after serving half of their sentences.

"Legally (Khodorkovsky`s) request (for parole) should
have been reviewed in Moscow, but it has been held up and
nothing was decided," said another defence lawyer Vadim
Klyuvgant.

"These are inhuman and illegal actions," he said.
"The court and two prisons are acting as a system in
preventing his parole request from being reviewed."